Sarkozy calls emergency EU summit on Georgia for Sep 1
Sarkozy - Saakashvili - Photo Elysee
(PARIS) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the EU, will convene a special European summit on the crisis in Georgia on September 1, his office said Sunday.
He called the Brussels summit on the future of relations between the European Union and Russia and on aid to Georgia at the request of various European countries, the French presidency said.
"This meeting will be dedicated to the Georgian crisis, notably to what positions the European Union intends adopting, covering aid for Georgia and future relations with Russia," a statement read.
Ex-Communist Poland, which last week signed a missile defence deal with NATO partner the United States, amid veiled Russian threats, has been actively pressing for EU leaders to attend such a forum.
Another key US ally, Britain, for its part, has also said that the EU needs to reconsider a planned formal partnership with Russia, covering issues ranging from energy supply to defence cooperation.
French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner had warned that Sarkozy might convene an emergency EU meeting if Russia failed to pull back its forces from positions in the former Soviet republic.
Russia withdrew tanks, artillery and hundreds of troops from their most advanced positions in Georgia on Friday, saying it had fulfilled all obligations under a French-brokered peace agreement.
But Russian troops still control access to the key port of Poti, south of the Moscow-backed rebel region of Abkhazia, and have established other checkpoints around South Ossetia, where the conflict began.
Acting as head of the European Union, Sarkozy had on Saturday telephoned his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev and asked him to withdraw his forces from a road linking Poti to inland Senaki in western Georgia.
The French presidency had said that the two leaders were agreed on the need for an international mechanism to monitor peace in Georgia.
However, the Kremlin subsequently rejected any notion that a deal would involve the replacement of Russian peacekeepers by forces under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which is dispatching an additional 20 military observers to the area.
Russian troops poured into Georgia on August 8 to repel a Georgian attempt to regain control of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, which is backed by Moscow.
Using tanks, artillery and air power, Russian troops managed to sweep across the country, stopping just some 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the capital Tbilisi.
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sarkozy and the Georgian crisis
Putin is still angry about his previous rebuke by Bill Clinton and he now has oil to flaunt and he is not going to be told what to do by a hungarian yiddish circus performer.
This crisis needs someone like Bill Clinton in the high office.
Remember the two incident while Nato was kicking the shit out of the serbs in Kosovo?
1) The chinese emboldened by their preferred trade partner status were taking some stupid risks like spying on the top secret US technology. They are good at stealing and they even went as far as ridiculing the Americans about what an easy target they were for infiltration at any level. Remember how a smart Nato bomb a couple of days later diverged from it's target of a bridge in belgrade and very cleverly found it's way to the chinese embassy. The chinese government could not comprehend what hit them for years after that.
2) And more importantly remember when the serbs surrendered and Putin acting like the hero big brother to the serbian hyenas sent his troops into belgrade ahead of the victorious Nato troops? Well little did he know that if he crossed Clinton his latest one billion dollar nuclear toy would be taken out of action just like that right in his front yard (or the pond as the case was) and his once mighty navy could be caught with it's pants down around it's ankles and could do diddly shit!!!
Putin was in a state of daze for months afterwards.
But that was Clinton. Nobody crossed him and got away lightly. The incumbent can barely menage a criticism of china on their human rights record but fails to make good on his words by showing up at the olympic opening seremonies and shaking hands with the very people he has just criticized. A photo op is too good to miss I guess!!!
Besides Georgia is a highway of oil into EU but has little or no oil to offer him to pay for his war mongery. So he is not thrilled with the prospect of crossing swords with anyone in Kremlin.
Good old Bill would have dispatched a couple of dozen cobra helicopters and taken out all those antiquated russian tanks within 24 hours - or much less.
Instead the poor Georgians are reduced to what little a french clown can deliver - empty words and a lot of posturing.
By now they must have realized that no amount of circus acting by sarkozy is going to save them soon enough.
They should also ignore secretary Condo as well about their prospects of joining Nato and hope that Barak Obama will get to the high office and rub Putin's nose in the dirt once again.
Hopefully good old Bill is over his defeat to get back into the big house again and will not take it out on Senator Obama's quest to the power house.
Let's hope not because the alternative candidate - if elected - may not have the energy to get out of bed at 3am to deal with the likes of spoilt brats like Putin-
as hinted by Hilary a few weeks ago. If she had anything to do with Bill's directives, she has bigger balls then the incumbent.
What a sorry looking bunch in power!!!